How I'm Building my Nutrition Business Before I'm a Certified NTP

As some of you might know, I started the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP) program (through the Nutritional Therapy Association) in the fall. When I graduate in June as a certified NTP, I plan to see clients one-on-one, in group settings, and also create programs and digital content to help athletes and women of all activity levels heal their digestion and rediscover their energy and vitality using real food, a balanced lifestyle, and ditching restrictive diets. I am SO over-the-moon passionate about this area of nutrition, and cannot wait to start helping people in this way!

Sometimes I feel so eager to get started with my nutrition business that I wish I was able to jump into it right now! There was a time not too long ago that I believed that I had to wait until I had a certification before I could launch the business I was so passionate about.

But I realized that even though I don't have a certification just yet, I still have skills and knowledge that people find valuable -- skills that don't require any kind of certification to actually put into practice.

For example, I LOVE cooking. Being in the kitchen is my happy place. I feel at home, nostalgic, productive, creative, nurturing, and inspired all at once. Because of this I feel very comfortable developing recipes -- after all, I've been doing it for years personally. So I thought, why not start offering my recipes to those who either don't have the time or ability to make them or create them on their own.

I was able to launch my meal-planning services last summer, but was still a bit clueless as to how to best market my services, how to present them on a well-functioning website, amongst other business-y question marks. After all, I'm not a business expert, I'm an expert in cooking, nutrition, etc.

Thankfully, I stumbled on Rebelle Nutrition's Digital Nomad Nutritionist course, which has given me so much more confidence, direction, and concrete action steps to help me build my business with its current services, all while building my potential client base for when I do get my NTP certification in the summer.

And because my husband and I want to have the freedom to move around wherever the wind blows us, being able to have a business that is location-independent (predominately based online) is really important to me. The Digital Nomad Nutritionist course is designed exactly for entrepreneurs who want to run their business 100% online.

Because I gained so much from this course, I wanted to share my experience with it with my fellow future nutritionists, NTPs, and health coaches, current nutritionists, NTPs and health coaches. Here are my top takeaways that I got out of the course:

My Top 5 Takeaways from Digital Nomad Nutritionist

1. The value of building your email list, and how to build it by offering your best free content. I hadn't even thought about why it would be important to have an email list, but after completing this course, i understand that it's the most important part of marketing for your business. If all other social media platforms disappeared tomorrow, how would you connect with your target audience? In this course I learned how to build an email list in an organic way.

2. Which website platform to use and how to get started building your website on it. This course shows you exactly how to set up your website in Squarespace, and walks you through how to connect your website to your email marketing platform and vice versa, so you can capture emails and offer your readers valuable free content.

3. How to present yourself on social media to get through to your target audience (hint: be YOU!) and build your following. Authenticity and vulnerability is key to building and maintaining a loyal audience on social media. And if you have a loyal audience on social media, you'll have loyal potential clients/customers!

4. Who should you be talking to? Find your Niche! This course taught me that if you're talking to everyone, you're really talking to no one, and that was so helpful for me in realizing that narrowing down your niche within the field of nutrition and wellness is incredibly important, especially in such a saturated market. Narrowing down your focus allows you to reach a very specific segment of the population, which sets you apart from others in the space.

5. Optimizing my your about page. This one was huge for me. I had no idea that my old about page was could have been where I lost people! Having an optimized about page can be so influential. It's the first place people go when they visit your website, and this is the first impression people have of you, your story, and what you can offer them.

I would recommend this course to anyone looking for how to build a location-independent business and launch successful products and/or services. From start-to-finish, this course shows you how to do it, with actionable steps to help you get there.

Not only do I feel more confident and empowered in offering my current services, but I also feel like I have more direction in who I'm offering them to. I also feel much better about how I'm presenting myself to my potential clients -- from my about page on my website and my social media presence, to reaching out in a professional and engaging way with emails.